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Characters
Mr Willy Wonka The eccentric owner of the world-famous Wonka chocolate factory. Along with his eccentric behavior, Mr. Wonka also has a benevolent side. The mystery workers operating his chocolate factory after the reopening are called Oompa-Loompas. The Oompa-Loompas hail from Loompaland, where they are the defenseless prey of hungry creatures like hornswogglers, snozzwangers, and whandoodles until Mr. Wonka rescues them. He brings the malnourished Oompa-Loompas back to his factory where they are allowed to eat their favorite food—cacao beans—in unlimited quantities and live in complete safety in exchange for running the factory. Mr. Wonka treats the Oompa-Loompas like children, and, in return, they trea t him as a benevolent caretaker. Mr. Wonka further demonstrates his affinity for children and wariness of adults by choosing a child to take over his factory. The child he seeks is humble, respectful, and willing to run his factory exactly how Mr. Wonka runs it himself. Though benevolent, Mr. Wonka’s character is not beyond reproach. His treatment of the Oompa-Loompas is paternalistic, and his desire to mold a child into a second version of himself is narcissistic. Furthermore, Mr. Wonka is unwilling to accept anyone’s foibles. He can be extremely demanding and judgmental. The four children who do not win the grand prize clearly disgust Mr. Wonka. He is short with each of them—he acts as if he invited each of them simply to prove the virtuosity of Charlie. The humble and gracious Charlie is everything Mr. Wonka is looking for. Charlie Bucket Charlie Bucket is the protagonist of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and he is the embodiment of all that is virtuous. He is deprived of adequate food, a bed, and any privacy. In spite of all this, he never complains, nor does he ever accept charity from his family when it comes at their own expense. Each morning, Charlie musters the strength to walk to school, even though he nearly freezes during the colder months. And each night, he returns home and dutifully spends time with his bedridden grandparents, a chore that he seems to genuinely enjoy. Charlie’s physical proportions align with his personality: not only is he quite small and undernourished, but also he is meek. He speaks only when he is spoken to. He never asks for more than he is given. He looks forward to the one time a year, on his birthday, when he can indulge in a Wonka chocolate bar, and instead of wolfing it down all at once, he savors it (bite by bite) for many months. Charlie walks past the world-renowned Wonka chocolate factory twice a day, yet this never causes him bitterness or anger. Instead, Charlie simply indulges in the savory smells coming out of the factory and humbly dreams of entering the factory one day. When the golden tickets start turning up in the hands of nasty, greedy children, Charlie never complains about how unfair it is that he will never get to go. Charlie’s strongest criticism of one of the other children comes when he hears that Veruca’s father is using all the workers in his peanut factory to unwrap chocolate bars night and day until his daughter gets a ticket. Charlie’s only comment is that Veruca’s father is not playing quite fair. Behind Charlie’s meek and virtuous exterior lies an inner strength and courage. He faces the new challenges and mysteries of the factory with the same bravery he employs to overcome the adversity of his everyday life. He finds all of the adventures in the chocolate factory to be wild and stimulating. While other characters cringe at the speed of the boat as it tears down the chocolate river, Charlie demurely embraces it, clutching to Grandpa Joe’s legs for stability and enjoying the ride of his life. Grandpa Joe Grandpa Joe is the oldest and wisest of the characters in the novel. However, like Charlie and Mr. Wonka, he remains young at heart. His youthful exuberance makes him the perfect person to escort Charlie to the chocolate factory.Grandpa Joe is also Charlie’s best friend. Every evening when Charlie spends time with his grandparents, Grandpa Joe entertains Charlie with a story. It is Grandpa Joe who initially tells Charlie all about the history of Mr. Wonka and his vaunted chocolate factory, and Grandpa Joe urges Charlie to have faith that he can find a golden ticket. Augustus Gloop Augustus Gloop is a fat overeater who is the first of the five children to find a Golden Ticket and win a trip to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, and is also the first to be expelled as a result of not being careful. His nationality is unmentioned in the novel, but both film versions portray him as German. Also, he is an enormous boy who has "fat bulging from every fold, with two greedy eyes peering out of his doughball of a head." His mother encourages his eating habits, saying that eating is his hobby, and that his habits are better than him being "a hooligan." She is blissfully unaware of the results of unhealthy eating, thinking that Augustus wouldn’t eat if he didn’t need to. Little else is revealed of Augustus' personality and his mother does all the talking to the reporters. Augustus' hometown celebrates his Golden Ticket discovery with a public holiday and parade, suggesting that the Gloop family is very popular where they live. Veruca Salt Veruca Salt, the spoiled and greedy only daughter of the wealthy Henry and Angina Salt, regularly exerts petulant behavior in order to get what she desires, and even her parents are not immune to her loud screaming outbursts and tantrums. She shamelessly browbeats her parents over material things. When Veruca demands that she must have a Golden Ticket, her father buys numerous cases of Wonka Bars, and orders his factory workers to put aside their regular duties of peanut-shelling and unwrap the bars, although stopping regular work in his factory would cost him business. The process lasts three days, all of which Veruca spends complaining and screaming that she doesn't have her ticket, and her father vows to keep up the search until he finds one for her. On the fourth day the ticket is finally found, Veruca is "all smiles again." She is the second person to find a Golden Ticket, and the third to leave the tour. Charlie Bucket comments that he doesn't think the father played it fair while the grandmothers say that Veruca is worse than "the fat boy" (Augustus Gloop) and deserves "a good spanking." On the tour, Veruca demands her father get her an Oompa-Loompa, then a chocolate river and pink boat like Wonka's, and finally, the demand that proves her undoing - one of Wonka's worker squirrels. Mr Salt later confesses to Wonka that he knows his daughter is "a bit of a frump," yet says that it's no reason for his daughter to be "burned to a crisp," on the grounds that he and his wife love their daughter very much. Violet Beauregarde Violet is described in the novel as having a "great big mop of curly hair" and as someone who talks "very fast and very loudly." Like Augustus Gloop and Veruca Salt, her nationality is never touched upon in the book, but she is depicted as America n in both films. Both her parents wind up accompanying her to the factory, though her mother disapproves of Violet's gum-chewing habit. During her newspaper interview, she talks about how she enjoyed sticking her previously chewed gum on elevator buttons so that the person who presses the button next will have gum on their finger, and chewing on the same piece of gum for three months, beating the record held by her best friend Cornelia Prinzmetel. She talks far more about this than her ticket. Violet Beauregarde is the third of the five children to find one of Willy Wonka's elusive Golden Tickets, and the second to be kicked off the tour. Mike Teavee Mike Teavee is, as his last name implies, a television fanatic, who is seldom away from his television set. He is the fourth of the children to find a Golden Ticket, and is also the last to be expelled from the tour. Unlike the other finders, the novel gives no explanation as to how Mike found his Golden Ticket because he talks only about his television obsession at his newspaper interview, especially his preference for the violent programs and expresses annoyance at the press for disrupting his viewing. In the novel, nine-year-old Mike is particularly obsessed with violent gangster films. He wore "no less than eighteen toy pistols of various sizes hanging from belts around his body," and he liked to act out gangster shootings wherein the characters were "pumping each other full of lead." Oompa-Loompa The short, orange creatures who work in the chocolate factory. They come from Loompaland, which is a region of Loompa, a small isolated island in the Pacific Ocean. They are only knee-high, with astonishing haircuts, and are paid in their favourite food, cacao beans.